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The 6 best coastal towns inside a nature park within 90 minutes of Pisa

Six towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. A square meter runs from €1,350 in Ameglia to €5,900 in Lerici.

We've written about all 6. From the 1,000 towns picked by Peter Benei.

92 towns written about, 908 to go. Follow along, free: Subscribe on Substack

Portovenere, Liguria

The coast between Pisa and the Ligurian border is unusual in that so much of it is protected. Umbrella pines run for kilometers behind the sand at Migliarino, San Rossore and Massaciuccoli, herons stand in the brackish water of the lake, and further north the Magra widens into a river park of reed beds and boatyards before it reaches the Gulf of Poets. The building stone changes as you go: pale Apuan marble in the Versilia hills, dark slate and rough stucco on the Ligurian promontories. Summer is beach umbrellas and fried anchovies, but the good months are the shoulder ones, when the mussel rafts are working, the pinewoods smell of resin after rain and a plate of testaroli or a bowl of mussels costs what it should.

The default plan is the Cinque Terre. Trains from Pisa run to Monterosso and Vernazza in not much more than an hour and a half, the footpaths above the vineyards are famous for good reason, and in high season the platforms and the coast path are full from morning until the last train back. It is a fine stretch of coastline that has become a queue. The villages themselves are small, which is exactly why the numbers arriving overwhelm them.

The protected coast does not stop where the famous five end. The same cliffs, the same terraces and the same seafood carry on around the gulf and south through the river park and the pinewoods, all of it inside park boundaries, all of it within easy reach of Pisa. The towns here sit on the water and inside a regional nature park at once, which means the land behind them cannot be built on. Fewer people go, and the trains and the coast roads reach them anyway.

Of the 23 communes we have mapped within 90 minutes of Pisa, 6 qualify as coastal towns inside a nature park: each is on the coast or on the hills just above it, and each sits inside a regional nature park. The smallest, Portovenere, has 3,201 residents.

Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best coastal towns that eat well within 90 minutes of Pisa and The best coastal towns inside a nature park in Liguria.

Going to the sea? How to find the free beaches in Italy.

1. Portovenere

Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.

1 h 23 min from Pisa · homes €3,900 to €5,800 a m² in the center · 3,201 people

Written about. No. 53. Read the letter →

Portovenere, Liguria

Why visit Portovenere

Portovenere closes the western mouth of the Gulf of La Spezia, three kilometers south of the city by water, facing the islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto across open water. The Roman Portus Veneris dates to at least the first century BC, named for a temple to Venus on the promontory that now carries the striped church at the harbor mouth.

Genoa took control in 1113 and fortified the town as the southern anchor of its Riviera defences, opposite Pisan Lerici across the gulf: the fortress above the harbor and the church on the rock were built to face each other's rival coast rather than each other. The upper town holds the castle and its Romanesque parish church, rebuilt after a fire in 1340 damaged that quarter; the single medieval street below runs parallel to the harbor, its plan unchanged since Genoa first laid the town out in the twelfth century.

The promontory church stands apart from both, reachable along the water's edge, with the sea cave that took Byron's name cut into the rock beneath it. A fortified street, a hilltop castle and a temple site turned church: the town reads as a defensive line built along a single spine of rock, with the gulf doing the rest of the work UNESCO recognized in 1997.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,800 a m².

What to see in Portovenere

  • Chiesa di San Pietro. Consecrated 1198, black and white striped Gothic rebuild from 1256-1277, on the rocky promontory where the Roman temple of Venus stood.
  • Castello Doria. First cited 1139, rebuilt 1161, expanded into the seventeenth century, the Genoese fortress above the harbor, prison under Napoleonic rule.
  • Grotta dell'Arpaia. Sea cave below San Pietro, also called Byron's Grotto for the English poet who swam from here to Lerici across the gulf to visit Shelley.

How to get to Portovenere

Pisa is about 1 h 23 min away by road.

Our tip

April through June and September to October are the working windows. Ferries to Palmaria run on full schedules from May onwards; the gulf is calm enough to swim by late May. July and August fill the carruggio and the Castello Doria, accommodation runs at three times shoulder rates, and the queue for the climb to San Pietro can reach an hour.

Everything we know about Portovenere

2. Ameglia

Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.

1 h from Pisa · homes €1,350 to €2,900 a m² in the center · 4,262 people

Written about. No. 18. Read the letter →

Ameglia, Liguria

Why visit Ameglia

The Magra was the Roman Macra, the eastern boundary of Liguria, and the hill at Ameglia stands on the border between Lunigiana and the Riviera where that river reaches the sea. Genoa bought part of the fief in 1141, the bishops took it back by 1284, and Castruccio Castracani of Lucca conquered it in 1321: a small fortress passed between larger powers for three and a half centuries before it settled into the shape it now has.

The marina at the river mouth is a separate world from the hill town above it. Where the castle and its concentric streets sit on the summit, the frazione at the water is a former fishing village, flat, tied to the tide and to summer moorings rather than to the bishops who once held the heights.

The two headlands south of that marina are reachable only by boat or steep footpath, cut off from the estuary settlement by their own geography rather than by distance. The town, in effect, is two places joined by the same river: a fortified height that answered to Luni and Genoa, and a working shoreline that answered to the sea.

What to see in Ameglia

  • Castello di Ameglia. Rebuilt in 1174 on a tenth-century footprint, episcopal fortress of the bishops of Luni, cylindrical keep above the Magra estuary.
  • Centro storico di Ameglia. Concentric medieval streets around the castle, twelfth and thirteenth-century houses with stone arches and external staircases.
  • Bocca di Magra. Old fishing village and marina at the river mouth, summer mooring for small craft, departure point for Punta Corvo by sea.

How to get to Ameglia

Pisa is about 1 h away by road.

Our tip

April through June and September to October bring the river's best months: clear estuary water, the headland walks down to Punta Corvo manageable, marinas at Bocca di Magra not yet at summer capacity. July and August fill the river mouth with summer boats from across the Gulf of Poets, and the road down from the borgo backs up on weekends. The Sagra del Pesce in mid-August draws thousands.

Everything we know about Ameglia

3. Lerici

Best for a swim. The comune's beach holds a Blue Flag.

1 h 1 min from Pisa · homes €2,800 to €5,900 a m² in the center · 9,245 people

Written about. No. 17. Read the letter →

Lerici, Liguria

Why visit Lerici

The Gulf of La Spezia takes its eastern shore here, and the playwright Sem Benelli named that shore the Bay of Poets in 1910, nearly a century after Byron and Shelley made it their address. The fortress that defines the harbor was begun by the Pisans in 1152 to control the gulf, captured by the Genoese in 1256, and rebuilt in its present pentagonal form through the 14th and 15th centuries; it now holds a paleontology museum with Jurassic dinosaur tracks recovered from the local sandstone.

Shelley lived at a house in nearby San Terenzo in 1822, he drowned that summer sailing from Livorno, and Byron swam across the bay from Portovenere on his way to visit him. Beyond the historic harbor the commune stretches south past a colourful frazione perched on a rocky promontory above the sea, a member of the Borghi più belli d'Italia network in its own right; a coastal trail links the two through olive terraces and pine woods.

The town beach holds a Bandiera Blu and the harbor fills with sailing dinghies all summer. Upper fortress and lower water, working harbor and outlying fishing hamlet: the whole gulf edge here reads as one address that two poets happened to share, and the parts of the commune as its castle, its beach, and its outpost on the rocks.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,900 a m².

What to see in Lerici

  • Castello di Lerici. Begun by the Pisans in 1152, captured by Genoa in 1256, rebuilt in its present form in the 14th-15th centuries. The pentagonal walls still hold the harbor under them, and the paleontology museum inside keeps the Jurassic tracks pulled from the local sandstone.
  • Bay of Poets / Casa Magni. The Casa Magni at San Terenzo, a Lerici frazione, was Shelley's residence in 1822, the year he drowned in the bay. The house still stands on the shore that gave the Bay of Poets its name.
  • Tellaro. Pastel-coloured fishing frazione clinging to a rocky promontory at the southern edge of the bay. Linked to Lerici by the coastal Castelnuovo trail.

How to get to Lerici

Pisa is about 1 h 1 min away by road.

Our tip

April through October is the open season in the Bay of Poets: warm coastal days, calm seas from late spring, and the sailing fleet active all summer. June and September are the best months: warm sea, longer light, fewer crowds than July-August. The castle is open year-round (paleontology museum included) and Tellaro is best in October-November when the colors go warm.

Everything we know about Lerici

4. Seravezza

Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.

44 min from Pisa · homes €1,400 to €1,950 a m² in the center · 12,381 people

Written about. No. 70. Read the letter →

Seravezza, Toscana

Why visit Seravezza

Seravezza sits at 100 meters where the Vezza and Serra streams meet, in Versilia Storica, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian. The territory was contested between Pisa, Lucca, Genoa and Florence for centuries before passing to the Medici, and the town's position at the junction of the two watercourses, with the mountains at its back and the coast within reach, explains why it mattered enough for all four to want it.

Michelangelo spent three years on Monte Altissimo behind the town, found his veins of white stone, and built a road to take it down toward the sea. Half a century later Cosimo I commissioned the Palazzo Mediceo here, a summer residence rather than a fortress, which says something about how settled Medici rule had become by the time it was built.

The two episodes, a papal quarry and a ducal villa, sit one above the other on the same small territory: the mountain supplied the stone that Florence wanted, and the valley below became a place worth building a palace in once the stone trade had made the route familiar.

What to see in Seravezza

  • Palazzo Mediceo. The residence stands in the centro, its design passed from one architect to the next as the project went on. It carries the UNESCO listing among the Medici Villas.
  • Pieve di San Martino alla Cappella. Eleventh-century Romanesque parish church between Seravezza and Azzano, with the ruined Annunziata Oratory alongside.
  • Monte Altissimo. The peak rises behind the town at 1,589 meters. The road Michelangelo built to bring the stone down still marks the route from quarry to valley, and the mountain is worked as a quarry to this day.

How to get to Seravezza

It has its own railway station. Pisa is about 44 min away by road. The full route from Pisa.

✷ We have written about Seravezza

“The best views are in Azzano and Basati. Also, don’t be surprised if half of the bars, cafés, and restaurants are called Michelangelo. You know the story of why. You can’t miss with any of them. All of them serve local food for local people, so it is amazing.”

Read our piece on Seravezza →

Seravezza & Stazzema | The Mountain Takes and Gives

Our tip

May through September is the working Versilia season, the inland equivalent of the coastal months at Forte dei Marmi and Pietrasanta six kilometers away. June and September are the best moments to walk up to the Cappella and Azzano: the mountain trails open, the marble quarries above visible from below. July and August are hot in the lower town but cool on the slopes, and the Apuan rains hold off until late September.

Everything we know about Seravezza

5. Sarzana

Best for a stage of a long walk. The Via Francigena passes through.

54 min from Pisa · homes €1,500 to €2,250 a m² in the center · 21,768 people

Written about. No. 20. Read the letter →

Sarzana, Liguria

Why visit Sarzana

Sarzana sits on the Magra plain at the Liguria-Tuscany border, eighty kilometers from Parma and thirteen from the sea at Portovenere. The town inherited the episcopal seat of Luni in 1204, when Pope Innocent III moved it here away from the malarial plain, and the cathedral built for that new seat still anchors the centro storico.

The walled center keeps its grid plan, with Via Mazzini and the cathedral square running through it and the Palazzo Roderio still doing duty as the town hall. Above the town, on a ridge, a second fortress with a triangular plan looks down on the plain and the older one below.

A future pope was born here in 1397. Between the hill fortress from the fourteenth century, the Renaissance rebuilding of the lower cittadella, and a cathedral that changed hands with a diocese, the town's layout reads as a record of who controlled the Magra plain and when.

What to see in Sarzana

  • Fortezza Firmafede. The fortress replaced a medieval cittadella on the same ground. Giuliano da Sangallo's plan survives largely intact, with the bulk and angles of the walls still readable from the approach into town.
  • Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Late Gothic Tuscan cathedral, elevated to minor basilica in 1947. A cardinal born in the town, half-brother to a native-born pope, left his mark on the later additions.
  • Croce di Mastro Guglielmo. The cross hangs inside the cathedral it has occupied since the seat moved here. Signed by its maker, it is the object the town's Romanesque reputation rests on.

How to get to Sarzana

It has its own railway station. Pisa is about 54 min away by road. The full route from Pisa.

✷ We have written about Sarzana

“It has the best panorama in Liguria, full stop, and I do not think it is close. The reasons are two. The first is the obvious one. You are 266 meters up, the cliff is high enough that there is no rocky beach below to draw a crowd, the sea on one side is the Gulf of La Spezia with Portovenere across the water and the Cinque Terre fading north, and the view on the other side is the Magra running into its delta with the white Apuane behind it and Tuscany beyond.”

Read our piece on Sarzana →

Magra Delta Roadtrip | A Tagine, a Lighthouse, and a Dead Roman City

Our tip

April through June and September into October are the strongest months for the centro storico, with the Festival della Mente filling the squares on the first weekend of September. July and August are hot on the Magra plain, often 32 to 35 degrees; the Fortezza Firmafede holds courtyard concerts in the evenings. The town stays open year-round because it is a working provincial center of 21,768 residents, with daily markets and trains to La Spezia, Pisa, and Parma.

Everything we know about Sarzana

6. Viareggio

Best for a day out from Pisa. It is 29 min by car.

29 min from Pisa · homes €2,400 to €4,500 a m² in the center · 60,618 people

Written about. No. 4. Read the letter →

Viareggio, Toscana

Why visit Viareggio

Viareggio sits at sea level on the Versilia coastal plain, the largest commune on the Tuscan riviera. The first parade ran in 1873, organized by middle-class residents as a float procession down the seafront; the masked protest against tax policy that followed gave the event its character.

The mascot's color scheme, red and white, was taken from the beach umbrellas that line the shore, a detail that ties the Carnival's invented figure back to the town's own beach culture rather than to any outside tradition. The rail link to Lucca and Florence arrived in 1890, and the city turned into a Belle Époque resort in response: the seafront was rebuilt in the ornamented style of that era over the following decades.

The Magazzini Duilio 48 along Viale Margherita, together with the promenade's other survivors, mark out where that resort-era rebuilding is still legible today. The city's two identities sit side by side on the same stretch of shore: one built by a rail-borne resort economy, the other by a homegrown winter festival that turned into the town's defining export.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Viareggio

  • Passeggiata Liberty. Three-kilometer Belle Époque seafront promenade lined with Stile Liberty villas, cafés and bath houses built between 1890 and 1925.
  • Cittadella del Carnevale. Sixteen vast hangars where the papier-mâché floats are built year-round, with the Museo del Carnevale and the float-construction workshops open to visitors.
  • Spiaggia di Viareggio. Ten-kilometer Bandiera Blu beach lined with the original bagni concessions of the Belle Époque, fine sand and shallow seabed.

How to get to Viareggio

It has its own railway station. Pisa is about 29 min away by road. The full route from Pisa.

✷ We have written about Viareggio

“The bike lane starts at the bottom of Lido di Camaiore and runs south along the coast for about eight kilometers before it hits the pier at Viareggio, and the thing it teaches you, if you ride it often enough, is that Viareggio is a city you should almost always see from the saddle of a bicycle and never, if you can help it, from the pavement. The pavement has the crowd on it. The bike lane has the city.”

Read our piece on Viareggio →

Viareggio | The cat at the end of the road

Our tip

May through September runs the season. June and September are calmer than the July-August peak when the beach concessions sell out and the parking on Lungomare fills by ten. February brings Carnival weekends and the largest crowds of the year for the parades along Viale Manin and Viale Margherita; the floats run through a full Sunday route.

Everything we know about Viareggio

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